ISO 16 · concert pitch
elliot.la
la is the note A.
A is 440 hertz.
This page is tuned to it.
II 880.00 Hz · the octave
A was not always 440.
Pitch drifted by city and by century. Baroque organs sat near 415. Nineteenth-century orchestras crept past 450, chasing brilliance, and singers complained. Verdi lobbied for 432 and lost. A conference in 1939 settled on 440, and ISO 16 made it the standard in 1955.
Every orchestra you have ever heard began by agreeing on this note.
Far from 440 the two tones just sound rough. Bring them close and the roughness resolves into a throb you can count: eight a second at Verdi's 432, one a second at 439. Tuning is the act of slowing that throb until it stops.
III 1320.00 Hz · the twelfth
Elliot Larson
I design and build software end to end: interface, application, infrastructure. Mostly Ruby, JavaScript and Go, with agents where they help and strong opinions about all of it.
This page is the entire extent of my web presence, which felt like a good excuse to make it ring.